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Kate Ruddle

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Love the recipe! Had a couple of bananas I needed to use fast, and this was perfect. I did everything exactly as suggested, expect mine were done sooner - more like 15 minutes. My oven runs hot I think, though. Really sweet and moist, and can't taste the mayo at all. :)

I didn't have any brown sugar, so just used white sugar and then added extra tsp. vanilla to compensate for the loss of flavor. These came out great, had to keep in oven more like 15-20 min., got 30 medium sized cookies out of this recipe.

I had never made bread before, and the first couple times I tried this recipe, it didn't quite come out - the taste was ok, but they didn't rise very much and the texture was kind of thick and chewy as a result. I finally found out what I was doing wrong - I wasn't getting the water/milk/butter mixture hot enough! I bought a food thermometer and got the temp. to 130 and they came out beautifully! This is probably obvious information for most on this site, but if you are like me and new to baking and having trouble with this, try buying a thermometer and getting the temp. exact! Also, try covering the bread with a damp cloth when you let it rise - apparently the dampness helps for some reason, according to another baker who helped me problem-solve on this one!

I used margarine for the butter and for the shortening in the icing. The cookie part came out very good but kind of greasy, but that might have been due to the margarine? Anyway, the greasiness of the dough was good in that the cookies didn't stick to the pan, and I just transferred them to paper towels to absorb some of the excess oil while cooling. In the end they were slightly greasy but not enough to bother anyone - in fact I got several compliments on them! Also, we don't have Herseys kisses here, so I had to use a different type of chocolate that is slightly bigger. I was still able to make 30 out of the dough and mine came out big enough for cupcake liners - I used greaseproof ones. They still only needed 8 minutes in the oven. Lastly, my icing came out too thick to drip over the tops, so I needed a piping bag. I had to stop baking halfway through - with one batch out of the oven and the other half still dough in the pan. I put the dough in the fridge and when I returned it had turned solid, but by heating it slowly on the stovetop I was able to get it back to the right consistency and finish.

Really good for when you don't have powdered sugar and/or want a harder icing that "sets." I used this to drizzle over a Bundt cake and it worked beautifully. Also, try swapping 1/4 cup of the sugar for the same amount of a powdered cappuccino mix- it adds a wonderful coffee aroma/taste. Btw- I had lots of left over icing, so if you are drizzling it over a cake instead of spreading it, you could halve the recipe and still drizzle generously.

Wonderful! If you don't have sour cream, you can sub plain Greek yogurt and it works great. I was worried this wouldn't have time to cool and would either crumble to pieces or stick to the pan's edges when turned over - I was baking it for a party and had less than an hour after taking it from the oven to let it cool before needing to leave. But, I generously greased my pan, generously dusted with powdered cocoa and put the cake in the fridge after baking to cool faster. When it was time to turn it over, the pan was still warm and I was nervous but, the cake slid out beautifully. Very moist and rich!